First broadcast September 15, 2006

Observing Two Anniversaries

10 p.m. to Midnight Host: Steve Winters

This week offers a two-part show to mark to two very different anniversaries. The first 90 minutes was devoted to a somber and solemn observance of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001.

The last 30 minutes was non-stop music to celebrate 60 years ago on Sept. 16 and 17 in Chicago at the Columbia Records studios when Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys — now featuring with Monroe a 22-year-old banjo player named Earl Scruggs, who possessed a style truly his own, and guitarist Lester Flatt, who played signature guitar runs — recorded the sound that would later be dubbed “bluegrass.”

Most musicologists mark these two days of recordings as the beginning of the “true” bluegrass style, genre and sound, although Monroe had been forming and leading bands since mid-1938, shortly after breaking up with his brother Charlie. The musicologists were on the mark because it wasn’t long after these sides were released in January 1946 that other string bands began copying the Monroe sound.

Sept. 13 also marked the 95th anniversary of Bill Monroe’s birth in Kentucky.